On May 13, 2009, at 1:44 PM, ravi wrote:
> I couldn't agree more with you about the state of WBAI, but wasn't
> JUC a response to whats-her-name's Christmas Coup?
>
> The Googles says: Utrice Leid, that's her name.
Yeah, that's her name. She had a lot to recommend her at first. She's very smart and a good talker (which is important for radio, though there are plenty of people at WBAI who don't think so). But power went to her head.
The JUC did arise as part of the plan to undo that "coup." (That's a funny word in this context, because Pacifica does own the license. It's their radio station, then and now.) Bernard was initially a popular fellow. He was an amiable co-host of the morning show, and a nice antidote to the rather non-dulcet tones of his then-sidekick Amy Goodman. But he started firing people he didn't like, among them, the health nut Gary Null (I think he's a quack, but he's got a big following, and raised lots of money), mainly because Null was a rival power center, and reporter/analyst Robert Knight (among his offenses - being black but playing too much "white music"). Bernard was close to firing the host of the Sunday morning classical show, Christopher Whent, because classical music is, you know, the colonizer's music. The shows Bernard introduced were mostly disastrous. But anyone who criticized him got denounced as a racist enemy of black management.
Doug